"SHAKESPEARE BEYOND DOUBT", Pages 73-87
"What is usually taken to be the first printed reference to Shakespeare comes in a book named Greene's Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance of 1592, written ostensibly by the popular playwright, poet and prose writer Robert Greene, but possibly in part or in whole by Henry Chettle.... Soon after the book appeared Chettle published Kind Heart's Dream with a preface in which he offered an apology for not having toned down the criticism made in the earlier book. He says that two men had been offended by the attack. He cares nothing for what one of them (usually supposed to be Christopher Marlowe) thinks, but regret having offended the other, 'because myself have seen his demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes. Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious [skilful] grace in writing that approves [demonstrates] his art.' The cryptic nature of the attack in the Groatsworth of Wit means that we cannot say definitively that it refers to Shakespeare." (p. 73-4)
So far Stanley Wells on the letter in GGW and Chettle's apology a few months later. I've underlined He says that two men had been offended by the attack and cryptic nature of the attack.
The way Wells renders Chettle's words is not wholly accurate. Chettle writes:
"About three moneths since died M. Robert Greene, leaving many papers in sundry Booke sellers hands, among other his Groatsworth of wit, in which a letter written to divers play-makers, is offensively by one or two of them taken..."
This information is anything but cryptic. It can be paraphrased as: "One of the playmakers took offence and told me so, asking a public apology. I cannot know for certain whether the other was personally offended because he didn't personally demand an apology from me, but some worshipful men urged me to write a public apology:
"To come in print is not to seeke praise, but to crave pardon: I am urgd to the one; and bold to begge the other..."
It seems clear that the "divers of worship" drew the apology from Chettle under the threat of punishing him. But for what? Without doubt for defamation in the case of the first playwright, almost certainly Christopher Marlowe, who in the letter was accused of Macchiavellism, then meaning about the same as atheism. Let us therefore look at how Chettle apologized to him. "For the first, whose learning I reverence, and at the perusing of Greenes Booke, stroke out what then in conscience I thought he in some displeasure writ: or had it beene true, yet to publish it, was intollerable: him I would wish to use me no worse than I deserve." It is clear that Chettle was addressing Marlowe PERSONALLY. Or to put it otherwise, that the private person Chettle begged the private person Marlowe not to use him too rigorously. How? In an article on defamation William S. Holdsworth ("Defamation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries" in Law Quarterly Review, No. CLIX, July 1924, p. 305) informs us:
"But, while the development of the tort of defamation was thus being warped by the action of the Common Law Courts, a wholly new conception of this offence was being developed in the Court of Star Chamber. The [Privy] Council and the Star Chamber had, in the interests of the peace and security of the State, assumed a strict control over the Press. Naturally the Star Chamber assumed jurisdiction in all cases in which its rules on this matter had been infringed; and this led it to regard defamation as a crime. Borrowing perhaps from the Roman law as to Libella Famosa, it treated libels both upon officials and private persons as crimes. The former were seditious libels, and directly affected the security of the State; and the latter obviously led to breaches of the peace." From thence it follows that libels upon peers and other high-ranking persons were not dealt with the same way as for private persons; it also follows that libel of a peer or an officer of state and the ensuing restitution of honor was not the private affair of him who had been offended: it was an affair of state, touching the principles of the social and political order. "Unless the defamation was of a sort which came within the statutes which created the offence of scandalum magnatum, the mediaeval common law gave no remedy. For all other defamation the suitor was obliged to go to the Ecclesiastical Courts." (p. 304).
Chettle's libel on Marlowe no longer fell under the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts; Marlowe would now have had to recur to the Court of Star Chamber. However, had Marlowe been a peer or a state official, the libel would not have been his private affair; the case would have, according to several statutes from the reign of Richard II to the reigns of Mary I and Elizabeth I, been taken in hand by the Privy Council (the Privy Council had jurisdictional powers). Had it no longer been Marlowe's private affair but a case of sedition, of attack on the security of the state, there was no need for Chettle to address a PERSONAL apology to him, nor for Marlowe to personally request an apology from Chettle.
This was the case not for Marlowe but for the other playwright. Which explains why Chettle could not know whether the third playwright was personally offended or not and why he had not to address a personal apology to him: it was a scandalum magnatum and such cases triggered the intervention of the Privy Council. The "divers of worship" who had the power to extract a public apology from Chettle must have been members of the Privy Council, the third playwright must have been a peer or a high-ranking man. In 1592 Chettle gives no names of the "divers of worhip", contrary to Gabriel Harvey in 1580 (libel on the Earl of Oxford and, mistakingly, on Sir James Croft, controller of the royal household. In his Four Letters (1592) Harvey writes:
"and the sharpest parte of those unlucky Letters had bene over-read at the Councell Table; I was advised by certaine honourable and divers worshipfull persons, to interpreate my intention in more expresse terms..." (Gabriel Harvey, Works, 3 vol., ed. by A.B. Grosart, 1884, vol. I, p. 180)...
It is likely that the "divers worshipful persons" were the same as the "honourable favourers" who "pacified" Sir James Croft on Harvey's behalf, namely M. Secretary Wilson, second Secretary of State, and Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer, both members of the Privy Council (ibid., 182)
But what could have been so insulting in the comments on the third playwright in the letter in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit?
"And thou no lesse deserving than the other two, in some things rarer, in nothing inferiour; driven (as my selfe) to extreme shifts, a litle have I to say to thee: and were it not an idolatrous oth, I would sweare by sweet S. George, thou art unworthy better hap, sith thou dependest on so meane a stay."
Is it not cryptic when Chettle revokes by stating that he has seen "his demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes"? "The quality he professes" was a phrase used for actors. Is it not cryptic when the "divers of worship" state that "his uprightness of dealing...argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing... approves his art"? But the word "honesty" had not the modern narrow meaning of "sincere". It occupied a broad semantic field. Though not uniquely applicable to an aristocrat, it was in the first place intended for an aristocrat, "a governor" as Sir Thomas Elyot calls him in The Boke named the Governor (1531), an educational handbook for the new aristocrat elite. Elyot applies the word "honest" to manners in general, learning, dancing, music, and any form of recreation. But, according to Elyot, the behaviour of the emperor Nero was not "honest" because he played the whole day before the general public. Roger Ascham is the author of another educational guide for the aristocratic youth, The Schoolmaster (1570). Ascham, too, uses the words "honesty" and its derivatives in various contexts: singing, dancing, learning, manners in general. As a quality of behaviour, "honest" was later often replaced by "civil". In fact, Chettle and the "divers of worship" expressed more or less the same, Chettle by stating that his "demeanour" (behaviour) was civil, the divers of worship by stating that he was "honest". But Chettle also intimated that he had been acting, probably in public - which did not befit a man of rank, nor did writing plays for the public stage. This the aristocratic third playwright had been doing and thefore was "unworthy better hap" since he depended on so mean a stay or social condition."
John Davies of Hereford says about Shakespeare that had he not played kingly roles, he would have been a companion for a king, ie a courtier. Even if William Shakepeare of Stratford had not been an actor, he could not have been a companion for a king, for he was a petty trader, and it was socially impossible for a petty trader to be a companion for a king, a courtier.
© Robert Detobel 2013